The Stupids

Bomb Rating: 

The lone redeeming feature of "The Stupids" is that it contains details surreal enough to supplant the acute pain with morbid fascination.

I was recently remodeling my kitchen and was trying to rewire myoven hood. For some reason, I couldn't turn off the proper power switch on my junction box, so every time I twisted the hood's wires together I received a sharp jolt of electricity through my body. Absorbing a shock of such teeth-chattering magnitude is like pressing against a handshake buzzer the size of a Volkswagen. It's one of the worst feelings in the world and it's still not as bad as watching "The Stupids."

This film is so awful it's actually embarrassing for me to recount the plot. If you winced at the trailer, you'll scream at the actual movie, which is about as enjoyable as open-heart surgery without the anesthetic. Stanley Stupid (Tom Arnold) thinks there's a conspiracy because he wakes up to find his garbage missing. As he searches, his wife (Jessica Lundy) believes he's been kidnapped by the police because their children, Buster (Bug Hall) and Petunia (Alex McKenna) leave her a cryptic note. In the course of searching for his garbage, Stanley actually does stumble upon a real conspiracy.

The lone redeeming feature of "The Stupids" is that it contains details surreal enough to supplant the acute pain with morbid fascination. The first is that the Colonel (Mark Metcalf), the leader of the conspiracy, wears a name tag that says "Niedermeyer," which, of course, was the name of his character in Landis' "Animal House." This kind of foul ego masturbation made me want to puke. The second bizarre detail is that "The Stupids" features cameos from numerous directors, including David Cronenberg, Costa Gavras, Robert Wise, Atom Egoyan and Norman Jewison. Apparently, John Landis has photos of them screwing farm animals.

If Landis really wants to make a film called "The Stupids," he should do a documentary on the making of his next movie.